This study explored the changing nature of post-secondary students' situational demands and how students of different ages cope with those demands. The study proceeded by tracking episodes of demands and coping throughout an academic year with a sample of 56 students enrolled at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (Canada) in 2-year academic programs. Students completed four coping inventories at four designated points during the academic year. Results produced no significant differences in the types of demands reported by students of different ages. Among findings were: (1) direct entry students, ages 18-19, made greater use of emotion-focused and disengagement strategies and showed greater coping stability across time suggesting that they appraised their inability to alter demand characteristics and resorted to emotional regulation; (2) students who rated coping efforts as less effective used more emotional venting and disengagement coping; (3) students who rated their coping strategies as highly effective tended to use more problem-focused coping and were able to maintain positive appraisals of demand characteristics; and (4) students age 20 or older used more suppression of competing activities, an active coping strategy important for coping with competing role demands. (Contains 42 references.) (JB)